Written by Jonathan Wojcik

Nightmare Beings IV

It's January 1st, 2016, and you know what that means! Happy New Halloween! We wound up going a little over-schedule this year, but we all know there's no designated point at which Halloween necessarily has to end, and not only will we be unleashing a slew of new horror fiction upon the internet this week, but we'll be looking at a few more of your nightmare beings - from a couple more artists than originally planned, to boot!

These five come to us from guest artist Madamecat, who also goes by Fallingfeather in our own Disqus comments!

BOGWATCH

From its weird appearance, to its wear name, to the weird little ritual that will doom four people to save your own skin, Bogwatch feels like it crept straight out of authentic folklore; something I might have expected to read about in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark!

CANNIBAL HEARTS

As terrifyingly cool as ravenous, fanged heart-heads are, I think the most fascinating question raised by this dream is what kind of store not only stocks ravenous, fanged heart-heads, but also carries flying machine parts and dresses at least one employee like Tinkerbell. It's the job of my dreams and I'm not even the one who dreamt it.

DOOR FRIEND

Lee Sherman has submitted excellent stories to the creepypasta cookoff every year, but he apparently also writes them while he isn't even conscious. Everything about this one is absolutely horrific, from the distorted monster taking someone else's form to the gnarled, pathetic thing on the table.

Even when I'm awake, "pitiful" creatures are scarier than dangerous ones. I wonder what the connection really was between the two beings...

THE PARKA

There's something really funny about a tall, faceless monster that both wears a custom parka and moves like it's skating everywhere, but it's the kind of funny that's simultaneously unnerving, and the concept of a monster that gets faster and faster if you produce sound would be a compelling one for any horror story. It could certainly make for an interesting mechanic in a game.

THE MAMMOTH

It's actually difficult to really picture the mammoth, let alone illustrate, but it might be one of the most ominously surreal dream-beings we've featured in this series, and you know what? Those infinite pipe screensavers were weirdly nightmarish.

THE SPOTLIGHT HEADS

It's interesting how many unrelated, seemingly arbitrary features dream-logic can throw together and still come out with something that just so weirdly works. You've got these porous, boneless, worm-infested, shrink-wrapped humanoids whose heads are spotlights and whose arms are possibly film. I want to say these hearken to when Silent Hill was actually good, but frankly, Silent Hill was never quite Spotlight Heads good.

That's it for this edition, but stay tuned for another five monsters illustrated by myself, another possible volunteer artist and five by Margret before the month's end!